Connecticut school shooting

[NetViper]

So then you too should take off your CT supercharger and hand it over to the authorities, because it has only one purpose...to make your car faster than it already is, which already exceeds the highest posted speed limit in any state in this country, and if you should suffer from a sudden loss of normal mental capacities and get someone else killed tragically, you shouldn't have had it in the first place.

You and Turbo and everyone like you should line up and set the precedent.....and then when the government tells us that wecan't go to the church of our liking you can argue that point on the forums as well. Turbo posed the question of where it ends????? ........I too ask that same question.

Sorry NA1MT, but I fail to see what my supercharger has to do with guns and murdering kids.

 

[LJSB]

the extinct japanese V6 car forum

I like this. Nice one.:biggrin:

One of the posts above really made me think. Limiting how fast cars can accelerate and restricting their top speed makes a lot of sense. One study by the NHTSA in 2004 attributed speed being a factor in 30% of all fatal crashes, with 13,982 deaths in speed related crashes.
It's going up too. It was 38,808 in 2009.
Speed kills and cars are just too darn powerful and fast for our own good. It was supposed to be transportation not killing.
Mandating all cars have a chosen target MPG and emissions rating should be done as well.
The surrender of non-compliant vehicles would be painful but think of the impact it would have in terms of lives saved and the impact on the planet and other peoples lives as well. It would be huge in term of saving lives and helping the planet.

We do need to sort out the types of guns and cars people have access to. It just makes sense.

Next: foods. Take a page from Mayor Bloomberg. Eliminate sugar drinks and foods that are known to contribute to heart disease, obesity and cancer.

We can make the world a better place. Right? Just pass laws that control what people have access to.

Dave ..can we legislate human behavior?

Already been done Doc. It's called the "10 commandments". :wink:

 

[bee_are_bee]

The only fact here I see relavent to this discussion is two crazy kids did something awful on separate sides of the planet. One had easy access to guns and killed 28 people. One only had access to knives and injured 27. None dead.

Guns exist for one purpose. To kill.

I get it. You're right, but the relevant discussion focuses on what we do about it. I'd bet money the kid in China intended to kill everyone he stabbed, just didn't get the job done. The Oregon mall shooter was confronted and stopped by an armed citizen. Funny how there's sort of a media blackout concerning that little tidbit.

The facts are clear, gun bans don't work. Seriously, look at countries where bans are in place. Look at cities and states with the most stringent gun laws. Unless we want our search and seizure laws to be turned on its head the bans will be impossible to police regarding criminals and those bent on destruction. I'm of the belief that not everyone should own a gun. But 2.97 gun murders per 80,000 guns indicates to me that an absurd majority of guns aren't used to murder people.

Personally, I plan to buy a gun, several, actually, but not before I take several months of training. I'm concerned because there have been a rash of break-ins, thefts and assaults in my neighborhood and I live in a nice neighborhood. Tell me how I'm supposed to know these people aren't armed? What law keeps me from being sure of this? I can tell you what laws are being broken when these crimes are committed, however.

- - - Updated - - -

Another thing I'd like to mention. I was a high school freshman in Junction City, KS in 1993 when a girl got shot in our cafeteria. A kid apparently got into an argument during lunch time and decided he was going to show everyone how "hard" he was. A girl got shot in the head. She was an innocent bystander, she survived but it cost her the rest of the school year and untold emotional pain. I remember this like it was last week. What was the result? Students were then required to enter the building at the front doors at the start of the day. All other doors were locked to entrance. Metal detectors were installed at the front doors. Lunch was 55 minutes before the incident, it was reduced to 35 minutes afterward. Eventually students were barred from leaving campus for lunch. Random locker searches ensued, dogs were employed to sniff for guns and drugs. Zero tolerance policy was instituted regarding ANYTHING that can be construed as a weapon. Results? Not more than two weeks later they caught another kid with a loaded .25 caliber handgun. I moved following the '93-'94 school year but as far as I know no other major incident ever occurred.

The school went on "lockdown mode" after this incident. The policing policies and actions were very invasive but it seemed to have worked to stifle further incidence. I believe something like this is what is necessary for a ban to be effective in our gun culture. I for one am not willing to go there.

 

[TURBO2GO]

Dave ..can we legislate human behavior?

Doc my feeling is that not being able to legislate behavior is just the more reason to not allow everyone such easy access to guns. We can legislate that. I'm not saying go all out ban but selling semi-autos at walmart? Are you comfortable with that?

 

[bee_are_bee]

Doc my feeling is that not being able to legislate behavior is just the more reason to not allow everyone such easy access to guns. We can legislate that. I'm not saying go all out ban but selling semi-autos at walmart? Are you comfortable with that?

I remember working at Walmart over a decade ago and thinking it was odd that you had to wait seven days to buy a handgun but you could walk out of the store with a shotgun.

 

[docjohn]

Already been done Doc. It's called the "10 commandments". :wink:

Joe you and I both know this is the way ,as is proper parenting/nuclear family, I just shy away from imposing my own belief system to others on line...

 

[DocL]

How quickly we forget about the past. Do you all not remember Oaklahoma City in 1995? There were 168 people killed, including 19 children, and 800 people injured. That attack was performed with the use fertilizer and gasoline. Items much more common than assault rifles and guns. Furthermore, there is no age requirement to purchase either and there was more damage and death in that massacre.

I don't know what the solution is, however we can't blame the object used. If there is blame to be placed, how is it that this last lunatic had access to these weapons. His mother obviously didn't keep her weapons secured and she was the only one with the legal right to own them in her house. Sometimes we overlook the obvious and place blame on the easy target. Hopefully through the investigation we will learn that she had the weapons safely secured. Until then she has some culpability here even though she was also killed.

 

[Jimbo]

Aren't all, or most, guns today semi-auto? So, we should limit Walmart to just selling muskets?

-J

- - - Updated - - -

Here's an excellent write-up by a woman who's in a similar situation as Adam Lanza's mother...

http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother

-J

 

[bigbadberry]

How quickly we forget about the past. Do you all not remember Oaklahoma City in 1995? There were 168 people killed, including 19 children, and 800 people injured. That attack was performed with the use fertilizer and gasoline. Items much more common than assault rifles and guns. Furthermore, there is no age requirement to purchase either and there was more damage and death in that massacre.

I don't know what the solution is, however we can't blame the object used. If there is blame to be placed, how is it that this last lunatic had access to these weapons. His mother obviously didn't keep her weapons secured and she was the only one with the legal right to own them in her house. Sometimes we overlook the obvious and place blame on the easy target. Hopefully through the investigation we will learn that she had the weapons safely secured. Until then she has some culpability here even though she was also killed.

Go and try and mass those items now, you would have better luck buying two bottles of Nyquil from Walgreens.

 

[NetViper]

I get it. You're right, but the relevant discussion focuses on what we do about it.

I don't have a better answer than simply more than we are doing now.

 

[Vega$ NSX]

Here's what I wrote in the Colorado Shooting thread but I feel is equally apt here:

Sigh, as I said before here, this really isn't a pro or con gun issue.

However, since it seems people absolutely insist on making it a gun issue, let me break it down plain and simple.

The simple fact of the matter is that there will ALWAYS be a certain percentage of the population that will just have this urge to kill people for unexplainable reasons. There will always be the Jack the Rippers, the DC snipers, and the Virginia Tech shooters. That is a fact of life and has been the case since the dawn of man.

Crazy mass murders have always occurred in history. The difference is that as technology grows, the capability of that one person to inflict more and more damage in society has grown considerably. In the time before guns, if a madman went on a killing spree, he was limited to the weapons at his disposal at the time. It could have been a knife or blunt object. Just how many people could a person kill in one sitting with a knife or club? One, two, maybe three? That same person, now armed with an assault rifle and 500 rounds can now kill two dozen people in one sitting and injure three times that. Just how many people could the Virginia Tech killer have killed if he only had access to a knife?

People always say, guns don't kill people, people kill people. That is absolutely correct and as discussed above, there will always be a certain percentage of the population that will kill other people. However, the statement should be revised to say, while guns don't kill people, and people kill people, guns give the people who are willing to kill other people, the ability to kill a lot more people when they do decide to kill people. That is a fact.

So although I am a gun owner and advocate, I will be the first to agree that eliminating guns would reduce the number of gun related deaths. Period. If people did not have access to guns, people could not kill with guns. However, people argue that you can't eliminate guns, that is completely false. If someone wanted to go on a killing spree, don't you think they could have been a lot more effective and killed a lot more people with a multi-shot grenade launcher or military grade flamethrower. Why are there not mass murders going on with people equipped with grenade launchers? Answer: Because they are illegal and extremely hard to get. That's why. If guns were illegal and made extremely hard to get, then there would be a lot less gun murders, just like there aren't a lot of people getting killed by grenades. However, more importantly, if guns are outlawed and are nearly impossible to get, then it eliminates the psyche of it even being an option to kill with. Why do mass murders use guns so frequently to kill and not C4 explosives? Because C4 is so inaccessible, it doesn't even cross the mind of a murder to even consider using. Rather they choose something very accessible such as guns. If guns were made as in accessible as C4 explosive, then the psyche of the murder would be quicker to dismiss the use of a gun.

So:

FACT, a certain percentage of people will kill other people. Always.
FACT, the accessibility of guns, means those people will have the ability to kill more and more people than if they did not have access to guns.
FACT, drastically reducing the availability of guns would drastically reduce the number of deaths due to guns.
FACT, gun accessibility can be controlled. It has been done so with fully automatic weapons, grenade launchers, plastic explosives, rocket launchers etc.

So gun control advocates are right and the simple answer is to eliminate guns right? Yes, except that it's WRONG. There is one major problem that keeps that from being accurate. The issue is the proliferation of firearms. The simple fact of the matter is that it is too late to control the accessibility of guns. They are ubiquitous. There are more guns than man, women and child in the US. The fact is, guns are accessible and there is nothing that can be done to change that now at this point. The cows have been let out of the barn and there is no way in getting them back in.

So if we know that guns are accessible and we know that a certain percentage of people are going to use them to kill, then what is the solution? If we try to restrict gun ownership, that will do nothing to affect the accessibility of guns for those who are going to kill. However, it give the madman with the gun, more power to kill more people because nobody can defend themselves.

Take a room of ten people and 1 of them is a crazy nut job. Say they are all unarmed and the crazy guy decided he wanted to kill everyone in the room. How many people could he kill with his bare hands? Possibly none, because everyone would jump him the second he tried to attack one person. Now let's say the crazy person got their hands on a gun. And as I pointed out, due to the proliferation of guns, there is almost no way to stop that crazy person from getting one. Now how many people could he kill. Chances are high that he could kill the remaining 9 people in that room. As long as the 9 other people are restricted from owning a gun, the one crazy person with a gun has the ability to kill everyone. Finally, let's say you give every single person in that room a gun. How many people could the crazy guy with a gun kill? One, maybe two, before the remaining 7 or 8 people all collectively shoot him. The point is, the only way to combat a person who is going to kill is to give everyone else the equal level of power that the person is wielding.

Say it was a law that every single man and women over the age of 21, by law, had to carry a handgun and be proficient with it at all times (like a drivers license). Everyone, all the time. How many people could a crazy person kill then? If everyone in that theater had a gun on them, by law, and were proficient with it, by law, then the number of deaths and murders would have been significantly reduced, possibly eliminated. After all, if you were a murder and you knew that every single person was carrying a gun with them at all times and could use it proficiently, would you even bother trying to shoot up a movie theater, restaurant or any public place?

But one could argue, but if everyone is carrying a gun, would everyone just shoot each other? What about arguments, road rage, bar fights? Well what's to keep people from killing people now? First off, there are laws and consequences for killing. At any time you could grab a kitchen knife and stab someone in the neck. But people don't because they know they would go to jail for that and ruin their life. Plus, most people are not murders. We have instruments of death at our disposal every single day. Everyone has the ability to plow their car into someone else at any time. Grab a knife and stab someone. Push them in front of subway train. People carry concealed guns with them every day, as I said before, there are more guns in circulation today than there are people, yet they aren't shooting each other every 5 minutes. Not to mention, how likely are you to shoot at someone if you knew they had the ability to shoot back. Here's the thing, go to any standard warehouse. Nearly everyone in that warehouse will most likely be carrying a blade or knife on them. Dozens of people carrying knives, sometimes getting into arguments and fights. Yet how many warehouse stabbings have you heard of? Not many. Same goes with butcher shops and shooting ranges. Yet it wouldn't be that much different than a society where everyone was carrying a gun.

For me, I'd much rather live in a society where guns were completely inaccessible, illegal and banned. However, since that ship has already left dock and there is no way that kind of society can be established here in the US, then I want a society where more people carried guns and the laws did not prohibit my ability to own one. The situation we have now, somewhere in between, where criminals have access to guns and upstanding citizens either don't want to or have a hard time of carrying one themselves is a very poor combination that will only lead to more unnecessary deaths of innocent people.

 

[steveny]

Somehow it should be cleaned up and I don't have the perfect answer, but it starts with not making them easier to get than twinkies.

In NY you'd die from the crap they put in a Twinkie long before, in some cases years before, you were granted a pistol permit. Anyone who thinks buying a pistol legally is easy hasn't purchased one legally in NY. I've heard its easier to purchase pistols in other states but I've never done it so I don't know. I'd like to see the results of a study that would show the rate of gun related violence and how it correlates to the ease of obtaining a firearm within the area which the crime occurred. It seems to me that firearm crime is actually higher in states where it's more difficult to buy a gun. NYC, Chicago, DC where you can't even be permitted to own a gun period.

In NY in order to legally purchase a pistol you first need a permit. To get a permit you need signatures from, I think it at least three other people who already have a permit. You are then finger printed and photographed several times and those prints are run through local and national crime databases for any crimes solved or unsolved. A set is also provided to the FBI and the secret service and I'm sure several other law enforcement agencies. They might even do DNA now who knows, if they don't they should. Then the entire packet needs to be reviewed by judges and they can sit on it as long as they see fit, mine sat for several years. You must have a perfectly clean record to even be accepted and I mean squeaky clean, you better not even have a j-walking violation. Even after a permit is granted it will come with restrictions. You may not be able to carry the gun with you it may only be used for home protection or target practice.

Even after you have the permit, when you buy a gun you have to go to the shop or person who is selling the gun and pay for it. Then you take the receipt for the gun to the police barracks. They look the receipt over, make sure the gun is already registered to the person or shop you are buying it from, this can sometimes take weeks to "clear" the weapon. If everything checks out ok you are given a purchase stamp to give to the seller of the gun so he/she can have the gun removed from his or her permit or inventory in the case of a purchase made from a shop.. After all that is done you then can take possession of the gun. The chain of ownership is never broken and it also makes it impossible, as it should, to sell a gun which is not legally registered.

I'd be interested in knowing how the process works in other states. I can't really think of a better, safer system than the one NY currently has in place. Yes there is still firearm crime in NY but not too often with a registered gun. Registered guns are the responsibility of the registered owner to keep safe.

 

[docjohn]

Pa ...very easy walk into store buy gun wait a 7-10 days for background check and done..for a conceal and carry permit 2 references criminal check and an active address where you can prove you live... done at the sherifs office,30 minutes later permit.Talk about the shear number of guns...every time a small municipality around us affers cash for guns I'm amazed how many folks bring in all sorts of firearms they had just lying around.

 

[steveny]

By "police state" I mean the police would have to be granted more broad search and seizure powers than they have right now. With our 4th amendment I don't see this happening. In places like Japan there are no such protections against "unreasonable search and seizure." This is partly how they police their ban on guns. Officers can search people simply by random suspicion. This is acceptable in Japan where they also have more respect and reverence for law enforcement. Japanese citizens are also freakishly law abiding. Not such the case here in the states. I also have a sneaking suspicion that criminals with guns will not so willingly surrender them to law enforcement if a ban were to take place.

You're right, most people don't harbor a kilo of cocaine, but the drug laws don't stop people who really want to do it from doing it. Law abiding citizens may surrender their guns but people without regard for the law won't do so. 300+ millions guns and gun homicides amount to just over 11,000. A vast majority of law abiding citizens don't use guns to murder people. Non-firearms homicides amount to a number that's about 46% higher. The most frequently used weapon in violent crimes is a baseball bat. One of the ultimate questions is how do we police this?? Simply making a law does not necessarily mean it will be.

I don't agree that citing gun restrictions in certain areas as meaningless. I agree that guns can be procured state to state so a municipal or state ban is effectively meaningless. That's why I believe they shouldn't exist. It just works to disarm law abiding citizens (meanwhile, Kennisaw, GA has an ordinance that heads of household own a firearm. Hasn't been a murder in that town since the early '80s). What these strict gun laws in places like Chicago and DC show me is the difficulty in policing such a policy. That's why I said we'd effectively have to rewrite the 4th amendment and become more of a police state. I don't see that happening in our politically correct culture because you and I both know that one or two groups will cry "profiling" and a "disparate impact" will be shown, etc. If our society existed in a vacuum then, yes, I'd be more inclined to believe a gun ban or heavy regulations would work but a complex web has been woven over the last two and a half centuries. IMO, part of how we change our culture is freely and outright judging cultural elements that glorify gun violence and start calling a spade a spade.

Well it's still unacceptable, you have to admit assuming that each of those 11,000 deaths were the result of a totally different gun, which we know is not the case, the ratio is low. IOW, out of the 300,000,000 guns 299,989,000 did not cause the death of someone. I'm sure any actuator would say those are very good odds and would gladly collect money to insure against incident readily.

I've never been to Japan so I don't know but I'd have to guess its not the melting pot that the USA is. It's hard to say your being profiled when there is little diversity. Again just a guess but I'd say there no sense in even claiming you're being profiled if there's no payday waiting at the end of your lawsuit.

 

[DocL]

Go and try and mass those items now, you would have better luck buying two bottles of Nyquil from Walgreens.

You mean that over a period of a few days I couldn't go to a few different stores like Ace Hardeware, Home Depot, Lowes, or any other private nursery and buy a truckload of fertilizer 100lbs at time and accumulate thousands of pounds of it. Please don't be so naive. Gasoline, come on now! LOL. Don't tell me that you couldn't buy 100gal in less than 30 minutes. I have two five foot bottles each of pure Nitrogen and Oxygen in my office that can easily be used for something destructive. However I have no intention of using those materials for anything other than what they are intended for by their medical description. Those bottles scare the $hit out of me every time they are delivered to my office. They get banged around and plastered all over them are huge stickers that warn about their explosiveness.

 

[steveny]

So what about Xbox and violent video games that glorify shooting other people? Sure, the vast majority of normal teens aren't affected but what about those kids with mental problems? Aren't these games just virtual killing training sessions that set the stage for real world problems in the future?

Hitler didn't have an Xbox.

 

[Jack Sparrow]

Pretty disgusting to read some of the responses by those who perpetuate the status quo. To those who advocate giving everyone a gun, should every country in the world be given nuclear weapons?

 

[steveny]

the other issue here is this idea of a suicide..... once a semi rational human has decided to kill themselves this opens up a whole group of options for this person.....thier once "worthless" life now has purpose..importance...whether a bomb is strapped to thier body or a gun in thier hands..by taking more lives than thier own they feel they will be leaving thier mark in this world,they will be imortalized so to speak.......how do we deal with this..

By letting law enforcement solve, take care of the crime and not the media. IMO the shooters identity background is useless information to anyone outside of law enforcement and it should be treated as so. Does it matter if someone knew him in school or if he lived up the block? If it does matter then you'll get a visit and interview from the proper authority and that's not some news anchor. If not, then its a non-issue where noteriety will not be awarded.
The shooter had the element of surprise to his advantage. That advantage needs to be placed in the hands of law enforcement. Let them do their job, connect the dots and monitor the proper dirtbags and possibly through that research surprise them beforehand.

 

[bigbadberry]

You mean that over a period of a few days I couldn't go to a few different stores like Ace Hardeware, Home Depot, Lowes, or any other private nursery and buy a truckload of fertilizer 100lbs at time and accumulate thousands of pounds of it. Please don't be so naive. Gasoline, come on now! LOL. Don't tell me that you couldn't buy 100gal in less than 30 minutes. I have two five foot bottles each of pure Nitrogen and Oxygen in my office that can easily be used for something destructive. However I have no intention of using those materials for anything other than what they are intended for by their medical description. Those bottles scare the $hit out of me every time they are delivered to my office. They get banged around and plastered all over them are huge stickers that warn about their explosiveness.

I too work with chemicals, not the type of pre bottled stuff you could fill up balloons with.

Legitimate explosives and hazardous chemicals are not as easy to source as you make out. You are being watched.

 

[steveny]

Would it make you feel better if he used a six shot revolver?
...

Which as I'm sure you know fires a round everytime the trigger is pulled so it too is semiautomatic just like an assault rifle. I think a lot of people who oppose guns do not have a firm grip on the difference between full auto and semi auto. Just about every gun produced in recent times will fire a round everytime the trigger is pulled until the gun is empty. Guns that will fire multiple rounds with one pull of the trigger are illegal nationwide for private ownership and have been for a very long time. The only difference between a hunting rifle and a assault rifle is the way it looks. If assault rifles could file a lawsuit for discrimination they'd win before even going to court.

 

[LJSB]

Pretty disgusting to read some of the responses by those who perpetuate the status quo. To those who advocate giving everyone a gun, should every country in the world be given nuclear weapons?

Who did you want to give nuclear weapons to first?

 

[DocL]

I too work with chemicals, not the type of pre bottled stuff you could fill up balloons with.

Legitimate explosives and hazardous chemicals are not as easy to source as you make out. You are being watched.

Of course I'm being watched, I'm not stupid. And not everyone can get the inhalation agents that I have in my office. But there are crazy people out there who would break into a medical office and steal stuff that can be used as an explosive.

 

[steveny]

Just shows how divided this issue is on guns.
We on this forum have a lot of common ground. Our interest in this car is pretty unique and we all have the means somehow to swing it's purchase and somehow keep them going, yet philosophies differ greatly.
Imagine how hard it is for Washington, where there isn't a lot of common ground, and the division on issues are much larger?
If only the worlds problems could be solved on the extinct japanese V6 car forum here.
I pray for the children and women lost and the famiies left scarred in this wake of insanity, and I'll hug my kids and grandkids much, much harder and worry for their safety in this world I don't feel like I know anymore.

I think the largest issue with the division on guns is that it's very unlike the division on broccoli. With broccoli some people try it and don't like it. Others try it and do like it. With guns I feel most that don't like them have not tried them. People who are pro gun most likely have been around guns their whole lives and see the usefulness in them. People who are against guns IMO most likely have made up their mind with very little knowledge of guns besides what their spoon fed on the news. No news channel is going to do a story about how a family ate well this winter because they had a gun to go hunting. No news channel is going to do a story about how many people died because of the over population of deer and deer being hit by cars killing the driver or passengers. It doesn't fit their agenda.

Most people who don't like guns buy their food at the store since being born. They most likely live in a heavily populated area and have never been hunting or maybe even plinking cans. They just don't see the usefulness of a gun. I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt there are people in this country who would starve to death without a gun, think Alaska now but poorer country areas 30 years ago. Like the show on discovery, Alaska: the last frontier. Believe it or not there are a lot of people in this country who still live like that out of need and choice.

I can tell you this for sure, I personally would have starved to death as a kid it I had to beat the pigs and cows to death with a rock instead of using a gun. And deer well they sure as hell wouldn't have sat down and waited for me to build a gallows.

Someone who has lived in the city their whole life will never understand the need.

 

[OneRedNSX]

Which as I'm sure you know fires a round everytime the trigger is pulled so it too is semiautomatic just like an assault rifle. I think a lot of people who oppose guns do not have a firm grip on the difference between full auto and semi auto. Just about every gun produced in recent times will fire a round everytime the trigger is pulled until the gun is empty. Guns that will fire multiple rounds with one pull of the trigger are illegal nationwide for private ownership and have been for a very long time. The only difference between a hunting rifle and a assault rifle is the way it looks. If assault rifles could file a lawsuit for discrimination they'd win before even going to court.

Correct. I was referring to the comment about a "semi automatic military grade weapon"... But you do have a good point regarding the descriptions. Same reason the media, and some in this thread, keep referring to the weapons as a "glock and a pistol"... Like they were two different things.

 

[NA1MT]

Sorry NA1MT, but I fail to see what my supercharger has to do with guns and murdering kids.

If after reading my post and considering all the information I gave you and you still don't get it.....well....what can I say other than ignorance is bliss. I am done with this topic, no good will come of it.